the blogs of markrandallpixley

Living with contradiction

When I stand back and look at the world around me, including the world of the church I am struck by the massive and immediate changes we are experiencing, and many of us seem to sleep through the huge and monumental shifts that are taking place before our very eyes.

Technology is astounding in the development of new products, medicine is on the verge of eliminating cancers and deadly diseases, communication is instantaneous with just about any place in the world, some of it borders on “magic”, 100 years ago this technology would have made you a wizard or worse, but it is so common place that even third world countries have cell phones these days.

I gave my grand-kids a camera that in 2000 cost me $700.00 and used a floppy drive to store the pictures…it was 1 mega-pixel…my current cell phone is several magnitudes better in both storage and quality…and I don’t even have to insert a card or stick or any other device to transfer the digital data to a different place…it does it automatically on its own, syncing between my iPad and laptop and cloud accounts…and it cost me 1/3 of the price.

This is astounding…

The same level of changes are happening in the church and across nations…we are in an accelerated season of change and many are completely unaware, happy to just watch on with mildly amused interest.

Plotting Reality

In order to accurately plot a trajectory you need an origin and a few points past that…and “origins” has been a new direction in much of the church culture…there are movements back to Hebrew roots…movements back to first century church models, movements back to Biblical Architecture, there is APEST, House Church, Torah, YHWH, Shabbat, away from “pagan-Christianity”, I even saw a recent (and serious) movement to have women cover their heads in worship…(please don’t get me started)…my point is this…much of the church is trying to recalibrate what reality should look like since the world we know is changing so quickly.

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ ”– The Velveteen Rabbit

There comes a point in both technological change and historical change where saturation creates its own wake, at this point history is “immediate”…we just assume these things have always been and they become part of the landscape…consider the fall of the Berlin wall, it is now such a long time into our history, that the event has become just a moment in history, but for those living in that moment it was a huge tipping point of change.

I suspect we will look back in a few years and see the trajectory and it will dawn on us that we were in an incredible moment of history and slept through much of it.

In my own journey I am trying to track my origin to something beyond even the first century…I am discovering my origin in the heart of the Father before the creation vignette gets moving…He knew my frame, saw my unformed substance while I was yet in my mothers womb…I am discovering the image of God imprinted upon my identity in Christ before it was lost in Adam…

Recently I went in to a local restaurant to pick up a “to-go” order for my daughter…in the booth was a group of elderly mentally challenged adults…eating ice-cream…making a general mess of things and under supervision…and it forced me to ask the Father “Where is your image in those people?”

If the purpose of Jesus was to rescue the image of God that was lost in humanity, then in every person alive there is a residue, an echo, a vibration of Gods beauty, His generosity, His compassion, His smile and kindness…

This contradiction has become my new reality…

This contradiction has become a game I play with the Father, or rather He plays with me when I am unsuspecting…when I went through customs into Cuba and was questioned by the Intimidating Official as to why I was there…the whole time I could not help but smile because the Father was laughing inside of me saying “He’s so cute, you should have seen him as a child, he used to chase butterflies”….God apparently has no issue with the contradiction…And living with contradiction is becoming the trajectory of life for most of us…

…the church is described as a building a holy temple, yet it is a body, the two could not contradict each other more…

We have the mind of Christ, but are told to renew our minds…

We are local , yet our citizenship is from heaven…

To be great we must become the least…

Things are to be done decently and in order, yet we may all prophesy…

We are living in both the greatest opportunity for financial success and on the brink of imminent destruction economically…

We have incredible freedom, but also seem to be increasingly under surveillance…

Contradiction.

We are getting used to it…and this is one of the things we need to adjust in our thinking, what level of contradiction are you willing to accommodate and in what areas is it acceptable?

The issues of women and authority, same sex partnerships, deliverance and reality, capitalism and poverty, taking care of the planet and freedom, all of these things are going to come up as contradictions…

For me…the trajectory is going all the way back to the greatest contradiction in history…the cross…where an innocent man was crucified and His blood speaks of greater things than all the blood of all the martyrs before him…

The blood of all the martyrs called for justice, screamed for vengeance, but the blood of Jesus shouts contradiction at us, declaring to the guilty “you are innocent, Father has forgiven you”…

Gods plan somehow swallowed up contradiction…I haven’t got my head around it, but it is bursting from my heart…which of course is just another contradiction I need to live with…

Place not Pace

One of my more immediate conversations with the Father has Him constantly driving me gently to “Be still”…He has used live bee’s and dreams to reinforce this lesson…I have stepped on bee’s and had them land on me in the oddest places, showing up unexpected to remind me of my current assignment…even in places where bees do not exist…

“Be still…”

Be…

And yet I am also moving at a faster pace in life than ever before…racing towards destiny and life changes at a reckless and unplanned pace…several years ago I was in an experience where the Holy Spirit took my scroll of destiny, jumped in a red race car and drove like a madman from Heaven to earth with me hanging on for dear life…all the while He was laughing and saying:

“Like a rushing wind, Hahahaha!”

In learning to be still I have had to ask how, because my mind will not be, and the answer I got re-calibrated most of my understanding…